If you think I’d started this blog because being happy comes easily to me and I just wanted to share that with you, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I used to be the most enthusiastic girl, always a huge smile on my face. But while I was handling a fulltime job as a teacher, studying a part-time bachelor’s, renovating a house and trying to live a life besides all that, I developed a number of alarming symptoms about three years ago, which I of course at first happily ignored.

An 8 km hike in fresh snow, couldn’t think of a better way to study.

I stopped wanting to wear colourful clothes (black, black, black and more black), I could burst into tears for hardly any reason at all, even out on the street so I had to run home in order not to worry passers-by with my loud sobs, really embarrassing, I was always waking up extremely early in the morning so I could start panicking about the day or even the years that lay ahead of me and, the saddest thing of all, I lost my cheerful enthusiasm. It was still there in this picture, which was taken two years and two months before I had my breakdown.

The way I dress is a telltale sign of how I’m feeling and it seems quite straightforward. The self-confident teenager I was during puberty (not), I was always wearing huge men’s T-shirts, oversized woolen jumpers and the same pair of green combat trousers, desperately trying to hide any curve that would give away me being a girl.

At 17: cargo pants and a huge woolen jumper

When I was eighteen, “all grown-up”, I finally dared to show off my feminine looks. Now, many many years later, I feel so loved and treasured that wearing dull trousers seems like such a waste when I can be wearing A-line dresses and shorts (not simultaneously though).

Some time ago however, in spite of the fact that I’ve been truly spoiled by my adoring boyfriend, I noticed that I was reaching for my black outfits again. It turns out that it’s quite something to go from zero to three children in one go, but what’s most exhausting is my teaching job that never seems to end (and never does when you are even a bit like me).

If you’ve read bits of my blog, you’ll know I’m not the one to sit around and wait for things to go by. Grabbing the bull by the horns is, to me, the only way out. I’m hoping to share whatever helps me overcome my second (almost) burnout both because of the therapeutic value writing has to me and because I might just happen to help one person who’s struggling with the same style-and-fashion-killing monster.